Certain functions of many electronic devices are often not accessible by general users of the device, and instead, are only accessible to an administrator of the device. For example, it would be advantageous to restrict the ability to change the configuration of a device to an administrator to prevent a mischievous user from configuring the device in an inappropriate manner. Any function provided by a device which is only intended to be accessible to an administrator shall be referred to as a restricted function.
Typically, for an administrator to access a restricted function of a device, the administrator must be authorized by the device. The act of authorizing the administrator to the device typically involves the administrator presenting some sort of credential (such as a password) to the device for evaluation by the device. If the administrator is unavailable or has forgotten or misplaced the credential, then the restricted functions of the device may not be accessible.
To address the situation where the administrator's credential is unavailable, certain devices may be configured with a reset mechanism (such as a jumper which may be interested into an internal circuit board of the device) which, when activated, resets the device to a default state, e.g., a state with a known administrator password. However, while such an approach allows the owner of the device to access the restricted functions of the device if the administrator credential is unavailable, it also allows any third party, with knowledge of the reset mechanism, access to the restricted functions of the device without the consent of the owner of the device.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.